


Gonna Set My Soul on Fire

by NotQuiteHumanAnymore



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Las Vegas Wedding, M/M, Vegas AU, those of you who know me know that this is like my second favorite marriage related trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 09:36:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7885945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteHumanAnymore/pseuds/NotQuiteHumanAnymore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pietro wakes in a bed that isn't his, in a town he almost doesn't remember going to, and with the sound of slot machines boring holes into his brain. Kurt wakes next to him, and neither one of them can remember what happened the night before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You Can Tell Your Mom I Moved To Arkansas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DigitalMoriarty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DigitalMoriarty/gifts).



> This was encouraged by @digitalmoriarty over on tumblr, because I needed to distract them from all of the angst they were throwing at me and as shown by the ficlet they posted last night IT DIDN'T WORK.  
> Alas, and all that.  
> I love married in Vegas tropes. I love them so much.

Pietro Maximoff woke to sun streaming through curtains, which was odd, given the fact that he didn't have curtains. 

This oddity was undermined, however, by a blinding pain in his head that emerged the moment he opened his eyes.

His throat felt thick, his eyelids felt like Warren had taped sandpaper underneath them, and his  _ head _ . Oh, his head was the worst of all. 

He didn't want to think about it.

Frankly, he wasn't sure he could have thought about it, even if he had wanted to.

The sandpaper feeling, he noticed, persisted down to his throat. He coughed once to clear it, groaning at the jostling that his head got at the movement. 

God, he was thirsty.

He groaned and rolled over, squeezing his eyes shut against the sun.

He was halfway back to sleep when something curled around his waist and someone (definitely someone) shifted in the bed next to him.

Warily, he cracked open an eye.

The sunlight, unfortunately, was the least of his problems.

Burrowed up against his chest was one of the top three  _ last  _ people he expected to see there (well, top three friends, at least. The top three people he didn't expect to wake up next to in bed were probably President Nixon, Bonnie Tyler, and Ralph Macchio).

Lucky as he was not to be waking up to Richard Nixon in his bed, what he found next to him was almost worse.

Okay, no, it wasn't.

Because it was Kurt Wagner currently wrapped around him like an octopus.

He'd wake up to Kurt over Tricky Dick any day. But Kurt was his friend! Friends didn't wake up in bed with each other! Did they-?

No!

They didn't. Pietro shut his eyes against the ever growing headache.

It would have been one thing, had it been Scott or Jean or Storm, but this was Kurt.

Kurt, the one person in the entire Xavier mansion, in the entire  _ world  _ probably, that Pietro Maximoff could ever lay claim to having a school-girl level crush on.

And they were  _ adults _ ! He was past the school girl crush phase!

The exclamation points at the ends of his thoughts were steadily worsening his headache.

Ugh. What the hell had he done in a past life to deserve something like this?

Pietro shoved a hand through his hair, trying not to jostle Kurt as he did so.

He was slowly descending into a panic. 

Okay, not slowly. He was already panicking.

If he wanted to have a meaningful relationship with Kurt, friendship or otherwise, he needed to be smart.

That was not his strong point.

Sure, he was smart and all, but that was very,  _ very  _ often overshadowed by his impulsiveness.

Kurt shifted next to him, bringing up a hand to his head to rub at his eyes and Pietro froze, suddenly aware that the hand that wasn’t being used to tear out his hair was still coiled around Kurt’s waist. It was decidedly too late to move.

Instead, he just focused on not moving and keeping his expression as innocent as possible. Unfortunately, his head hurt way too much to actually pull that expression off, and he wasn’t even sure that he  _ was  _ innocent. He hadn’t a single clue what had happened the night before. He remembered....

Lights. Lots of lights. And this was very clearly not his bed, or Kurt’s bed, or any bed in the mansion. Slowly a few details drifted back into focus and he groaned aloud.

They were in Vegas for Scott’s twenty-first birthday. It was technically a joint party for Jean, Jubilee, and Ororo, too, as they’d all turned twenty one before Scott and decided to just all go to Vegas at once.

It was a “tradition” or something. For his and Wanda’s twenty first birthday, they’d gone gambling in Deadwood, South Dakota and proceeded to get kicked out of every casino in the town. No one could prove that they were cheating, but no one could just win as many times as they seemed to without cheating.

Unless one of them had a particular skill set that involved messing with probability in their favor.

Pietro didn’t really count that as cheating, though.

Okay, yeah he did. The “house” could never prove it, though. 

He remembered Ororo and Kurt engaged in a drinking contest, and Warren declaring himself the sanest one there.

Since his healing factor had taken his slump into alcoholism back before En Sabah Nur got to him and turned it into an immunity, it did make the most sense.

He’d broken up the contests before Kurt and Ororo could drink themselves half to death and shoved Kurt towards Pietro and Ororo towards Jubilee with instructions to “take care of them”.

Unfortunately for Warren, Pietro had been drinking, too.

And that is where the night went dark.

“Pietro?” Kurt’s voice came muffled from somewhere around Pietro’s chest. Pietro did his best to sound unaffected in his response, but the sound came out a bit strangled.

“Yeah?” Kurt pulled out of Pietro’s embrace to push himself up on his elbows and peer down at Pietro with concern. Pietro winced at the shifting Kurt’s movement caused. His brain felt seasick. Was that possible? He’d never been on a boat before. He’d ask Kurt if his head didn’t feel so seasick.

Kurt, for his part, looked completely fine. Practically perfect, even. The only hint to discomfort that he had were a few wrinkles at the edge of his eyes and his mouth. 

“How the fuck are you not dying?” Pietro asked in a whisper. “You drank more than I did.” Kurt shifted uncomfortably, jostling Pietro again. Pietro closed his eyes with a whimper.

“I’ve got a very high pain tolerance.” Kurt murmured, like it was a secret he hadn’t meant to tell.

Pietro fought down the blush that sentence brought to his cheeks and looked away. He felt the mattress shift beneath him as Kurt sat upright.

"Why am I in your bed?" He asked, and Pietro raced through a billion and one potential answers during the pause that came before Kurt's next question. "And why am I in your clothes?" Pietro's eyes shot open. Sure enough, Kurt was in a pair of sweatpants that Pietro remembered packing in case he needed something extra to sleep in, and the shirt Pietro had had on the night before. He shut his eyes against an onslaught of pain in his head and rolled over to bury his face in the pillow.

"I don't know." Was his muffled reply. He felt Kurt reach over and smooth down the hair on the back of Pietro's head soothingly. It really helped.

What also helped was that the lingering fear that he’d totally screwed up his chances with Kurt over a drunken one-night stand were quickly abating. As time went on, his metabolism kicked back into high gear, running the remaining alcohol out of his system. He wasn’t sure why he’d decided to slow his metabolism in order to get roaringly drunk (he generally tried to avoid doing things like that, as slowing his metabolism made it impossible to go at even his minimum speed without delay, but his brain never slowed down enough for it to be anything other than anxiety inducing), but some part of him had decided that it was clearly the best idea at the time.

Pietro pushed himself over onto his back and forced himself into an upright position, unfortunately disrupting Kurt's soothing ministrations. Pietro's eyes felt dry, like he'd run 5k without his goggles on, and his mouth tasted like death, which wasn't all that surprising, considering the fact that he'd woken up  _ feeling  _ like death as well. He ran his hand across his face, opening his mouth to say something, anything, maybe mention the fact that he really needed to brush his teeth because  _ oh my god, gross _ , but he stopped cold when he saw a smudged note written on his palm in Sharpie. It took him a moment to decipher the words hidden under the smudged ink, especially given that he'd written them in Sinte, not English, because all of his most important notes were written so that only he could read them.

When he finally got his brain into translation mode so that he could actually comprehend the meaning behind the words, his blood ran cold.

"remember to look for the rings!!"

It was either a reference to the copy of The Two Towers he had buried in his bag under a pile of clothes and snack food, or...

Or.

Or what? It could technically mean anything.

Drunk Pietro was an asshole, he decided. 

The least his drunk self could have done was mention  _ what  _ rings it was that he was meant to remember. It was just a nonsense note, probably.

So why did he feel like he was forgetting something very important?

"Hey, Kurt?" He prompted, turning to his friend. Kurt was watching him a little lazily, sprawled on his side again, his tail flicking around behind him the only outward sign of anxiety that Kurt was showing. Pietro's shirt was slightly too big on him and had ridden up a little, showing a sliver of pale blue skin. Pietro felt his heart skip a few beats at the sight.

"Hmm?" Kurt looked like he was halfway back to sleep already, despite the sunlight streaming into the room and onto the bed that Pietro had meant to take the night before. 

"Do you remember hiding anything last night?" Kurt's brow furrowed at the question, his lips parting slightly as he thought. At length he shook his head, his hair fanning out on the pillow with the motion. His lips stretched into a pout and Pietro felt warmth surge up inside of him to rest inside of his ribcage. A small smile softened his eyes and tilted the corners of his mouth as he looked at Kurt.

"I don't remember much of anything." Kurt replied, a little sheepishly. Pietro realized that if he didn't leave the bed immediately, then he wasn't going to for at least the rest of the day, which would probably be suspicious, especially if their ridiculously nosy friends decided to barge in to check on them and noticed (how could they avoid noticing) that not only were the two of them still in bed, but that they'd clearly shared a bed the night before.

He knew that at least Storm would read way too far into that.

Storm had figured out his feelings for Kurt almost as soon as they'd become friends. She'd warned him off of the constant staring and puppy dog eyes ( _ alleged _ puppy dog eyes. He denied everything). That was something that no one had ever really done for him before. He immediately adopted her, obviously. One could never have too many sisters, and Ororo had no family to speak of, so clearly the next best option was to induct her into the Maximoff Family Madness.

By extension, Pietro would assume that Jubilee knew, too, since Ororo wasn't really the type to keep things from her girlfriend. But, as much as he loved Jubilee, really, she was an honorary Maximoff sibling too, she couldn't keep a secret to save her life. If she knew, then Kurt would, too, and there was no way that Kurt would share a bed with him if he knew Pietro's feelings. Things would probably be awkward between them and their friendship would have already been ruined before the trip even began.

The most logical explanation was that Ororo had stuck by the Bro Code and told no one, not even her girlfriend.

That was something that not even Wanda would have done.

Ororo was promoted to favorite sister, as Pietro tore his gaze away from Kurt and pushed himself off of the mattress in the general direction of the hotel bathroom. He was still forgetting something, and he glared at his reflection in the mirror as he brushed his teeth, willing his uncooperative brain to function properly and help him remember whatever it was that he kept getting the urge to look for. 

It was important, was all that his brain was giving up. He walked out of the bathroom, and, as if on cue, the door slammed open and through the opening fell Ororo and Warren.

"Scott got a tattoo!" they shrieked in tandem, and all thoughts of what he and Kurt were forgetting were forced from his mind.

This was much more important.

_

 

Pietro took about a thousand and one pictures of Scott's tattoo. He didn't look at any of them, but there would be time to delete the bad ones later. 

The tattoo was actually really cool, something that Pietro had been kind of disappointed about (it's not a vacation unless someone comes back with a tattoo they regret), the words inked into his skin reading "Mutant And Proud" around his wrist, alongside two dates. Pietro suspected that they had something to do with his brother, but that wasn't something that he was going to bring up out of the blue. He might be impulsive, but he had tact when it counted. 

Things did start to get a little strange as the day went on, though.

He also started to remember bits and pieces of the night before. Little things, what he'd eaten, some of the places he and Kurt had gone, racing to see how fast they could go even while drunk off of their asses, that sort of thing.

The note on his palm itched, and he really felt like he needed to find something incredibly important, but how was he supposed to even start to look without knowing what he was looking for? It was probably nothing.

Nonetheless, the feeling lingered. 

Pietro caught sight of a man who he was fairly certain had clapped him on the shoulder and called him "righteously brave" the night before. He wondered if he was getting some of Wanda's memories again. That hadn't happened in years, but why else would a total stranger call him brave?

It got weirder, though, when the man and his girlfriend came running up to him and embraced him... again.

Definitely not Wanda's memory, then.

The woman was in tears, thanking him for letting them be a part of such a personal event, and wishing him happiness. He forced a smile and pretended that he didn't want to tear apart the casino to find whatever he was missing. 

Worse still, when they followed him over to the bar, both of them ran over to Kurt and gave him the same treatment.

Kurt gave him a terrified and confused look over the woman's shoulder as she embraced him, crying again, and all Pietro could do was spread his hands in the most sincere "I have no fucking clue" gesture he'd ever made.

Kurt was polite to everyone, though, so if they suspected that the two of them had no idea who they were, they didn't show it.

As they left, though, the others turned to Kurt and Pietro and began the interrogation. 

"Who the hell were they?" Scott asked, sounding far too gleeful.

"I won't even pretend to know." Pietro replied, looking to Kurt for confirmation. He nodded at Pietro.

"I have a vague memory of them, but I don't remember why we met them, or why that woman was crying."

"She seemed like that kind of person. You know, the kind that cries at everything? I had a cousin like that. Kid cried all of the time. Whenever something didn't go his way, whenever something did-" Ororo trailed off with a shrug, craning her neck to follow the couple as they left the bar. 

"You really don't remember?" Jean asked, sounding far too interested. She knew something, Pietro decided. She knew something and she wasn't going to tell them. He narrowed his eyes.

"I don't remember much of anything that happened after we all separated." Jean propped her head in her hand, her fingers surreptitiously coming up to cover the smile on her face.

And by surreptitiously, Pietro meant the exact opposite. She was being as transparent as the window behind her.

"I didn't think you'd be able to get drunk." Warren commented, waving a hand at the (third) empty plate behind him, "What with the super metabolism and all." Pietro resisted the urge to stick out his tongue at Warren. He wasn't young enough to get away with that, anymore. 

"I can regulate my metabolism at will, thank you very much." Pietro replied, heavily implying the stuck out tongue in his words, rather than his actions.

Jubilee kicked him under the table and Pietro tried to look as innocent as possible. He blinked a couple of extra times, just to give the full "innocent as a wayward deer" experience.

"You and Kurt disappeared for at least three hours. You have  _ no _ idea what you did?" Kurt shook his head, Pietro fidgeted, trying to make sense of what little he remembered.

"Well, I know we hid something." Kurt turned to him, surprised.

"We did?"

"I did, at least. And I wrote a note on my hand to remember to look for it."

"What does the note say?" Pietro considered giving it to them at face value, but it was less fun to do that when someone else could potentially understand it. Sinte and German shared a root language, and a few actual words, too, which would probably make it easy for Kurt to translate. He showed the smudged ink on his palm to the people around the table.

"Remember to look for the rings." He translated, before anyone could ask. He glanced at his palm again and added, “and I think that that was a smiley face in another life.” Scott leaned forward, and Pietro could see him squinting through the glasses. He leaned back nodding.

“Yeah, I can see it.”

Kurt took Pietro’s hand in his to examine the message himself. Pietro tried not to blush, or give any outward indications that this was any different than if Jubilee or Warren had decided to do the same. But he couldn’t repress a slight shiver when Kurt ran a fingertip across the cramped lettering, hesitating as he crossed the smiley face.

“Does that mean anything to you?” Warren asked, peering over their shoulders to look at their joined fingers and pretending not to notice when one of his wings thumped Kurt between the shoulder blades. Pietro noticed, and he also noticed the slight curve to Warren’s mouth that seemed to mimic Jean’s.

What the hell did he know?

Kurt dropped Pietro's hand like he'd been burned and steadfastly looked at the table. For a moment the entire table was still, before Jubilee reached across the table and tapped the back of his hand twice.

Kurt looked up at her with a grin that was unbelievable.

Literally.

Not a single person around the table believed it.

"So you two disappeared off of the map for hours and the only people who know what you did are two complete strangers?" Storm asked, clearly trying to take the attention off of Kurt. 

"It would seem so." Kurt chirped, just loud enough to be heard over the noise in the hotel. 

He still sounded too cheerful. His voice had risen almost a full octave, and he absolutely refused to look in Pietro's direction. Pietro curled his hand into a fist in his lap, trying to dispel the memory of Kurt's fingers wrapped around his own.

He glanced over and caught sight of Warren running a thumb across the back of Kurt's neck in what was clearly meant to be a soothing gesture.

Pietro fought down the jealousy that rose in his throat, bubbling too quickly to the surface, and focused on clearing another plate of food. 

He missed Kurt shrugging off Warren's hand with a glare and a glance back towards Pietro, as well as Warren's answering shit eating grin. 

When the group of them had finally had their fill of gawking at Scott's tattoo, and Warren had grown tired of smirking at Pietro as he ran his fingers through Kurt's hair, or draped a casual arm around his shoulders, the group separated. After a series of events outdoors, Pietro, Jean and Ororo had found themselves thrown into a fountain outside of one of the fancier casinos. It was a nice way to cool off at the time, of course, but Pietro's clothes were starting to chafe, and parts were refusing to dry in the heat, thanks to the ever present layer of sweat he seemed to be covered in since disembarking the plane (or, as he liked to refer to it as, the nightmare box, but it was faster than a car so at least he didn't have to endure it for eighteen hours. That was the only upside that he could seem to find. He was honestly considering just running back, despite his friend's claims that it would be better to just fly back, and it would be faster to fly, even at his top speed, really! Planes were no better than iron coffins that happened to be capable of moving in the air. In short: awful).

Pietro dragged himself back up to the hotel room feeling exhausted and weighed down by the sheer force of the Nevada heat to the point where the rest of the world had somehow sped up to half speed instead of it's normal 1/15 speed. Or maybe Pietro had just finally figured out how to slow himself down without going out of his skin.

He just had to be constantly overheating.

That's all.

Part of him wanted an immediate shower, and the rest wanted to fall onto his bed and sleep again for a thousand years. Or an hour. Whichever came first.

In the end, the weird metallic smell that came from falling into a fountain filled with coins won out, and he dragged himself into what was probably his slowest shower since his mutation manifested. The icy water slowly leeched the heat from his skin and he began to feel more like himself. The world started to slow down again, and he heard through the thin walls the second that Kurt and Warren came into the room. He couldn't make out words, of course (not that he really thought that he would want to. He didn't need to hear Warren flirting with the guy he was in love with. Not least because Warren and Kurt had known each other for much longer than Kurt had known Pietro, and also because Warren had finally ditched his awful haircut in favor of growing it out so that he looked like the classical description of an angel (not the kind with all of the eyes, but the more widely accepted one) and was honestly fine to look at now. Which sucked. Because Pietro could stand to be around him back when he had a terrible haircut and showed no interest in Kurt whatsoever, but now he could very easily make Kurt fall in love with him. It would be poetic to someone like Kurt, that he fell in love with an angel.) Pietro shook water out of his eyes angrily. He needed to not focus on hypotheticals. It was a bad habit of his, one that both he and Wanda had tried to break him of. His mind tended to get attached to certain possibilities for the future. He would hyper-focus on them, and sometimes, if he was really careless, he would get lost in them.

He heard Kurt squeal something that sounded like "No!" from the other side of the door and wondered if he really wanted to go out there.

Honestly, though, he knew that the longer he waited, the worse it would (could, they weren't together yet, as far as he knew) get.

He shut off the water and zipped into the spare pair of sweatpants (not the ones Kurt had been wearing earlier) that he'd stashed in the bathroom, in the event that something like this happened. He walked out of the bathroom, pretending to be intensely focused on toweling his hair. As he pulled the towel away from his face, he heard the telltale sound of Kurt teleporting. When he looked up, Kurt was visibly flushed (which, from experience and a lot of bad jokes, Pietro knew was hard to pull off) sitting on the edge of the bed they'd woken up in, while Warren was sprawled in the desk chair about three feet away.

"Oh is the shower free now?" Kurt asked clearly trying to dispel the awkward tension that Pietro had walked into. Without waiting for an answer, he teleported into the bathroom, leaving Pietro and Warren alone in the room.

"Did I interrupt something?" Pietro asked, trying for nonchalant, and likely succeeding, because he didn't care if he interrupted a hundred moments between Kurt and Warren, Kurt could do better. Warren stood in an annoyingly fluid motion, a smirk resting on his stupid face like it had been sculpted there. As he brushed past Pietro, his right wing jostling Pietro's shoulder, he lowered his voice so that Kurt had no chance of overhearing from inside of the bathroom. Warren's voice was smoother than silk as he spoke, dragging out the words to ensure that Pietro listened to them all. 

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

He chuckled on the way out, and Pietro was forced to admit that no, he did not want to know.

He shook his head and walked over to his bag, throwing the towel he'd been using on his hair at the chair Warren had been occupying with slightly more force than was probably necessary.

He pulled the bag open with the intention of looking for something comfortable enough that he could forget that Kurt would likely be falling into Warren's arms (or wings) before the week was up. As he yanked the bag open, however, he was surprised to see that his copy of The Two Towers was indeed on top of everything else, instead of protected over off to the side, where he was certain it had been yesterday when they got there.

He pulled the book up out of the bag and was hit by a memory so vivid he could hardly believe that he'd forgotten it in the first place.

“Oh. Oh no.” 

Pietro reached into his bag and snatched the book up, terrified that he was right, for once.

Pietro fanned the pages of the book, letting them fall gently through his fingers until the book fell open on its own. The movement was stopped short by a folded piece of paper.

His memory hadn’t been terribly forthcoming about what was on the thick piece of paper in his hands, choosing to give him back other things instead. Kurt scribbling the wobbly smiley face on his palm next to his own note-

The feeling of Kurt’s lips pressed against his own. Pietro rubbed at the corners of his eyes, staving off guilt and another headache.

Kurt was going to kill him. Hell, Warren was probably going to help.

Pietro plucked the paper from the pages of his book and set the book back in his bag where it belonged. 

He had a really bad feeling about the paper. He unfolded it anyway.

For a moment, he couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. And then, so slowly that he was ashamed to call himself a speedster, everything began to fall into place.

Drunk Pietro was an asshole it was official, he decided as Kurt emerged from the bathroom. He couldn’t make himself look at Kurt, still staring at the paper in his hands.

“What’s that?” Kurt asked, bouncing down next to Pietro, rattling him out of his shock.

He almost crumpled the paper and threw it out of the window, but it was as much Kurt’s as it was his, so he handed the paper over to his friend.

Or, rather, to his husband.

The paper that they’d hidden the night before was a marriage certificate.


	2. From Good to Great

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to John Mulaney, even though he will never know.

They were  _ married _ . They had gotten married the night before. Pietro could remember things, now. Little things, certain things, asking two strangers to be witnesses, bickering over who should officiate, and best of all, he could remember seeing Kurt beaming at him, happiness aglow in his features every time Pietro had leaned in to kiss him.

"We can," Pietro swallowed thickly, flicking his eyes between Kurt's stricken expression and the paper in his hands. "We can-"   
_ We can  _ what _? _ His brain hissed at him. _ We can fix this? We can pretend it never happened? We can ignore the fact that I kissed you no less than seven times last night? _   
"We can fix this." Pietro insisted. Kurt whirled that same expression towards him, an inch of despair creeping into his eyes. "I know you're probably against the whole 'divorce' thing, what with being Catholic and all, but we could always get an annulment. You don't-" Pietro couldn't keep looking at Kurt, it hurt enough to kill him, probably, but he kept looking anyway. "You don't have to stay married to me." Kurt made a noise. He turned his face away from Pietro, tracing their names on the marriage certificate with his fingertip. Pietro realized, with no small amount of horror, that tears were brimming in Kurt's eyes.  He watched as Kurt drew in a deep breath, his eyes blinking away the tears so that they were clear and beautiful as ever as he turned back to Pietro.   
It took him another minute to realize that it was  _ actually  _ slow motion. He had accidentally slowed his perception of time, trying to prolong the illusion that he would deny having, of himself and Kurt staying married.    
He didn't want this to end. He sped time back up anyway.   
"What if I want to stay married to you?" Kurt asked quietly.    
Pietro blinked.    
"You… what? Kurt are you sure?" Pietro squashed the little bloom of hope unfurling in his chest. Hope never did him any good. Kurt nodded, and as he looked at Pietro, a bit of the despair in his eyes faded, replaced by determination. 

“I'm sure. I remember some things about last night, now, but mostly I remember being happy. I was so happy that we got married, Pietro.” his voice went small and quiet, some of the happiness he spoke of overwhelming the fear tinging his words. “I was so happy when you said yes.”

_ When you said yes. _

The words bounced around Pietro’s brain for a moment before seemingly finding the memory they were looking for and taking root. 

_ “Take care of him,” Warren sighed, guiding a clearly tipsy Kurt toward Pietro. Pietro  swayed on his feet, setting the bottle (he'd pretend it was his first of the night if anyone asked) on a table nearby and held out his hand to Kurt. Kurt blinked at Pietro’s outstretched fingers and followed them laboriously up his arm, to his face. When he registered who was on the other side of the hand, he gasped in delight, his face lighting up brighter than any of the ringing machines in the room with them. He launched himself clumsily towards Pietro and grasped his fingers like he was afraid Pietro might decide to evaporate on him.  _

_ They stumbled around for a while, trying to remember the way back to their room, Kurt alternating between watching his feet and beaming up at Pietro, who couldn't take his eyes off his friend. _

_ The pair reached another dead end. _

_ Kurt giggled, leaning heavily against Pietro. _

_ “Do you think that this is the same window, Zügig?” Kurt asked, squinting at it like it would reveal the secrets of the universe to him. It could have been. It very easily could have been the same window, the peeling paint and tacky wallpaper were the same, the view outside was of city lights, as in all the windows, but in his current state, Pietro couldn't have said for certain. _   
_ “I don't know...” he murmured. Kurt let go of Pietro’s hand before walking over to the window in question. Pietro made a noise as Kurt's fingers slid from his own, missing the contact immediately. Kurt's feet were far steadier than they had been when Warren had handed Kurt off to Pietro in the lobby, and it was a matter of seconds before Kurt was peering through the window and poking at the chipped paint on the sill. Pietro felt a smile bloom on his face as he watched Kurt. After a few moments, Kurt spun back to face him. _

_ “It's not the same window!” he declared, despite the fact that it was. Of course, he didn't know that, but the pair also didn't seem to realize that it was the window directly next to their room. _

_ Arm in arm once more, the two of them left the hallway.  _

_ Again.  _

_ They wandered the corridors, giggling and trying to remember what floor they were on as best they could. This was going about as well as could be expected.  _

_ And then Kurt led them back to that same window. _

_ “Ach!” he exclaimed. “We are going to be doing this forever!” there was only a little bit of disappointment in his voice, overshadowed by a victorious tone that made no sense to Pietro.  _

_ “Well,” he replied, knowing full well that he would never say these words sober, “At least I'll spend forever with  _ you _.” _

_ If he hadn't been quite so earnest, he probably could have laughed it off. As it was, Kurt turned to him with a gasp of delight. _

_ “Would you like to spend forever with me?” even if Pietro had not been smitten, even if he hadn't been daydreaming about similar questions for months, Pietro would not have been able to refuse the brightness in his eyes, the hope in Kurt's voice. A smile spread across his face, and he knew that all of his feelings were shaping his features. There was no way that Kurt could misunderstand. _

_ “I can't think of anything I'd like more.” Kurt whirled to face him, taking both of Pietro’s hands. _

_ “Will you marry me?” _

_ There was only one answer Pietro would ever give. _

_ “Yes!” _

 

Pietro blinked, his breath short in his chest. This changed things. He'd been under the impression that he'd roped Kurt into marrying him, had talked him into it, convinced him it was a good idea to tie himself to Pietro forever.

But  _ Kurt _ had wanted to marry  _ him _ .

“I've never been happier, either.” Pietro told him, placing the backs of his fingers on Kurt's cheek, tracing the line of scars there. Kurt met his eyes again at last, and a smile quickly grew into a blazing grin that Pietro knew he’d never forget.

Kurt leaned forward, bumping his forehead against Pietro’s, and Pietro’s breath caught in his throat. The way that Kurt’s breath brushed across his lips was tantalizing, exhilarating in a way that nothing else could ever be. 

“We’re married,” Kurt snickered.

“Why is that so funny?” Pietro teased, not hurt in the slightest. “I’m a wonderful husband, I’m sure.”

“Well, Pietro, I know that you’re a bit new to the romance scene-” Pietro snorted, “-but most people go on dates first. For at least a few months.”

“Oh, we will be doing that, too. I have too many date ideas to  _ not _ take my husband out.” Kurt made a strangled (but happy, definitely happy) noise in the back of his throat and hid his face in Pietro’s shoulder, wrapping his arms around Pietro’s middle in a hug. 

“I’d like that,” Kurt said, voice muffled by the fabric of Pietro’s shirt.

“We should probably tell everyone we got married. I’m sure they’re curious.” Pietro remarked, after staying like that for a few minutes. If he were being honest, he wanted to brag. They’d have to see the others eventually, and it would all come out then, anyway, given that one of the world’s most powerful telepaths was one of their best friends.

Pietro was incredibly pleased that when they did eventually stand to leave, Kurt didn’t let go of his hand.

When they found everyone, there were a few raised eyebrows at their joined fingers, but no one said anything outright, clearly waiting for them to have the first word.

“Hey guys,” Kurt said, instead.

“About damn time,” Scott replied, and Pietro rolled his eyes.

“So guess what we did last night,” Pietro began, sliding into a chair beside his husband. 

Jean hid her face.

“You knew!” Kurt exclaimed.

“You asked for directions,” she shot back, lifting her head, and her words were tinged with laughter. “I wasn’t sure if you went through with it, though.”

“Wait, what? What did they do?” Jubilee asked, and Pietro could see her confusion reflected back in Scott and Storm’s eyes.

But not Warren’s.

Warren had the single most smug smirk on his face that Pietro had ever seen.

“You knew, too.” It wasn’t an accusation, or a demand for answers, though he’d be demanding to know why Warren was running around flirting with  _ his husband _ later. Not now, though, because Kurt’s hand found his beneath the table, and that was more than enough to calm his rising temper. 

“I didn’t just  _ know _ , speedy.” Warren said, his smirk shifting into a shit-eating grin. “I officiated.”

And there it was. The last piece to the puzzle that Pietro hadn’t been able to put together. He started laughing.

Kurt hadn’t wanted to be married by an Elvis, and Pietro wasn’t religious most of the time, but he drew the line at being married by a bishop. They’d bickered about it for a while, before Kurt’s breakthrough.

Warren had become a fully-ordained minister a few months before.

Pietro remembered asking Jean for directions, and when she refused, because he was too drunk, he remembered asking two complete strangers, and then requesting their presence as witnesses.

“You are an  _ asshole _ .” He said, but it was almost kind. Warren spread his hands.

“I have many talents.”

“Time out guys, what happened?” Scott asked, fully bewildered and more than a little irritated.

“Kurt and Pietro got married last night.” Jean and Warren said at the same time, and the table exploded with conversation. Pietro beamed over at Kurt, who was laughing at Jubilee’s faux-outrage. 

He didn’t even try to hide the adoration on his face. 

Eventually, things calmed down. Kurt and Pietro got poked at for doing something silly, and no one else brought up the idea of a divorce.

Pietro was beyond glad.

He was surprised, though, when Warren approached him, later on. He’d wandered off to stretch his legs, to feel the sun on his face and the open air outside, after the chill of the casino and the press of too many bodies near his own. Warren leaned against the wall and looked at him, measuring him up.

“Kurt’s worried, you know.” He said, at last. Pietro blinked. “He thinks you might still want a divorce. He won’t say anything, of course, but I know his reasons for not going after you before now. That won’t have changed.” Pietro’s brow furrowed, but before he could think of something more articulate than  _ what? _ Warren shrugged. “Just thought you’d want to know.”

So Pietro was left alone outside again. Suddenly, it wasn’t the inside that was oppressive, it was the heat bearing down on his shoulders, the lack of a presence beside him.

He needed to show Kurt how he felt.

He wandered back through the casino and something caught his eye. 

The nearly-gone note on his palm itched and he walked into the jewelry shop.

He’d make Kurt a real ring later, one that fit he wouldn’t have to wear on a chain around his neck, if he wanted it. 

But for now, he knew that the rings were a symbol, and he wasn’t going to leave Vegas without showing Kurt exactly how much he meant to Pietro.

He spent more time than expected with the enthusiastic saleswoman behind the counter. She was clearly very invested in her job, trying to figure out exactly what would be best for the pair. Part of Pietro wished that Kurt were with him, but he wanted this to be a surprise.

His immediate instincts steered him towards the rings that glimmered silver in their cases, but Pietro remembered quickly that this wasn’t about him, this was about them, about their lives together. About what he hoped would be a long, long future. 

Kurt would likely want something more traditional.

He left the jewelry shop with two identical rings, they bore a shimmering gold band circled above a burnished silver. The moment Pietro had seen the ring, the saleswoman had beamed at him and taken a measurement. 

The rings weren’t just perfect, it  _ felt _ like the rings was theirs the moment the metal had touched Pietro’s skin. 

All he had to do now was give the ring to Kurt.

But he couldn’t just drop the ring into his palm and call it good, he had to show Kurt that he meant it, that his feelings were going to last long after this weekend. 

So he did the one thing in the world that never got easier for him.

He waited.

And finally, as the night was drawing to a close, and Kurt gravitated towards him once more, bringing his soft smiles and bright eyes back to Pietro’s side, Pietro could wait no longer. He laced their fingers together and pulled Kurt outside, out behind the hotel that they were all staying in to the closed off pool area that had already been “closed” for the night. It was past ten, and as the door shut behind them, the sounds of life from inside the lobby, the laughter and various slot machines and casino games disappeared, leaving the two in relative silence. The dim glow of the underwater lights and the few scattered lamps along the fence left enough light to see by, and Pietro was glad of it, because he was desperate to see Kurt’s face when he showed him the rings. Pietro pressed a quick kiss to the back of Kurt’s hand and let go, unable to stop himself from smiling as he saw the flash of Kurt’s fangs before Kurt covered his own smile with his hand. 

He laughed, half out of nervousness, half out of the joy that came from realizing again and again that he  _ was _ going to get to spend his life (at least a part of it) with Kurt. 

“So,” he began, and all the threads of an organized speech he’d thought he’d put together unraveled in his mind. “I know that you proposed last night and we should have done this then, but we also haven’t really been doing things in order.” Kurt let out a quiet laugh. Pietro took that as the only encouragement he was going to get and pulled the rectangular box that held both rings from his pocket, flicking it open in a smooth movement, so that Kurt still couldn’t quite see what was inside. He pulled the ring that he’d already connected to a chain from the box and set the box down on one of the low poolside tables. “I know it’s not the right size for you to wear, but I figured I could make you another one once we get back. And,” Pietro flushed, suddenly glad for the darkness, so that Kurt couldn’t see his cheeks burning.

(He, quite conveniently, forgot about Kurt’s night vision.)

“And,” Pietro continued, refusing to let his nerve die, “I wanted you to have one, too.” Pietro held up his hand and let the ring hang in the air between them. He watched as Kurt’s eyes went wide, his smile returning without his hands raising to block it from view. He let out a stunned half-laugh. 

“The rings hold a lot of symbolism, and I want everyone to know that we belong together.” Pietro concluded, completely incapable of raising his voice above the barest whisper. 

“We belong together.” Kurt repeated, his voice similarly hushed.

Pietro moved slowly, carefully. He watched Kurt for any sign that Kurt had changed his mind, and when no objections came, he hooked the chain around Kurt’s neck.

The pair watched as the ring settled against his chest, and Pietro’s fingers followed the chain down to the ring itself. He traced the circle with his fingertip and thought about eternity.

Pietro stepped away and watched as Kurt did the same, his eyes taking in the sight of the ring hungrily, holding it gently, but in a firm grasp, as though afraid that it would disappear. After a minute, his eyes flicked from the ring back to Pietro’s face.

Pietro had never seen anyone half as beautiful as Kurt.

There was an instant, a breath of a second after Kurt’s eyes met Pietro’s again, where they were both completely still.

And then Kurt surged forward, cupping Pietro’s cheek in one hand, and pulled him into a kiss. 

It may not have been their first kiss, but it was the first not clouded by alcohol, their first as two people whose feelings were truly bared to each other, and Pietro couldn’t think of anything more perfect. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this fic! I might do another chapter, just little behind-the-scenes bits of their night that didn't wind up shown in the fic. It was so much fun to write, and I'm so very sorry it took so long to update!  
> If you'd like to come throw prompts at me, I'm on tumblr over at @scarletwix!

**Author's Note:**

> I SWEAR THE ENDGAME PAIRING IS NIGHTSILVER YALL  
> (I MEAN I'M NOT OPPOSED TO QUICKNIGHTANGEL OR ANYTHING BUT THIS FIC IS NIGHTSILVER)  
> Warren is just an Ass and he knows that Pietro's got a crush and is trying to make him do something about it.


End file.
